Olympia Dance Festival 2024

Last night’s show was sold out, and there was a Black Friday type energy in the audience as we all waited and made our way to our general admissions seats.

I say this not just because my mom is a volunteer usher at the WCPA, but because it is true — the ushers showed a really impressive amount of professionalism and patience with the audience last night. Prior to the show, people were audibly mean to the ushers and one another, but the ushers kept it together. The audience had the potential to ruin the show with disrespectful and disruptive behavior…and the thing is that the majority of the audience was parents and fellow performers. I’m pretty good at tuning people out and enjoying a show, but I almost couldn’t do it. All the performers worked too hard to be disrespected by their audience, and I hope that the performers were able to better tune out the audience and fully enjoy their moment.

Speaking of moments, there were a lot of good moments. Not every performance suited my taste, but I was grateful for the opportunity to learn more about the arts community in my area. I kept a pen with me and had a smiley face system to indicate how I felt about each of the 29 performances. These were the performances that earned a in my program:

• Ballet Northwest’s: “Illumine”
• Studio West Dance Theatre’s: “Skies on Fire”
• Qiqi Dance Group’s: “Mom, I Love You”
• Centralia Ballet Academy Company’s: “Variations in Time and Space”
• South Sound Dance: “Steam Heat”
• Olympia Ballroom Dance: “I Ain’t Worried” and “Take You to Rio”
• Haley Prendergast Irish Dancers: “Showcase” and “Boondoggle”
• Amira Belly Dance: “Zio”
• Fang Fei Dance: “Steppingstone Bridge”

All of the performances displayed talent and dedication, but these stuck out to me because of their creativity, music choice, costume choice, and feeling of camaraderie. Everyone has their own tastes, and these were the performances that suited mine. These were enchanting, magical, fun, and/or brought some Broadway vibes.

Overall, I was really amazed to see how many performers there are in our community. We have lots of artists in our community, and we need to support them! Art makes life better for all!